The Complete Compleat Enchanter (14 page)

“Look out!” said Snögg suddenly. “Giants come!”

A flickering yellow light was showing across the lava beds. Snögg vanished into a patch of shadow, while Shea and Heimdall crouched under the edge of a dyke in the lava flow. They heard the crunch of giant feet on the basalt. The shadows swayed this way and that with the swinging of the fiery swords. A giant voice rumbled, “Hey, you, this is a rough section. There’s enough pockets to hide fifty prisoners.”

Another voice: “Okay, okay. I suppose we gotta poke around here all night. Me, I don’t think they came this way, anyhow.”

“You ain’t supposed to think,” retorted the first voice, nearer. “Hey, Raid!”

“Here,” growled a third, more distant, giant.

“Don’t get too far away,” shouted the first.

“But the other guys are clear outta sight!” complained the distant Raid.

“That don’t matter none. We gotta keep close together. Ouch!” The last was a yell, mixed with a thump and a scramble. “If I catch those scum, they’ll pay for this.”

The light from the nearest giant’s sword grew stronger, creeping toward Shea and Heimdall inch by inch. The fugitives pressed themselves against the rock at their backs as if they could push themselves right through it. Inch by inch—

The giant was clearly visible around the end of the lava dyke, holding his sword high and moving slowly, peering into every hollow. Nearer came the light. Nearer. It washed over the toes of Shea’s boots, then lit up Heimdall’s yellow mane.

“Hey!” roared the giant in his foghorn bass. “Raki! Randver! I got ’em! Come, quick!” He rushed at a run. At the same time there was a thumping behind them and the nearest of the other two leaped up out of nowhere, swinging his sword in circles.

“Take that one, warlock!” barked Heimdall, pointing with his sword at the first of the two. He vaulted lightly to the top of the dyke and made for the second giant.

Shea hefted his huge blade with both hands. You simply couldn’t fence with a crowbar like this. It was hopeless. But he wasn’t afraid—hot dog, he wasn’t afraid! What the hell, anyway? The giant gave a roar and a leap, whirling the fiery sword over his head in a figure eight to cut the little man down in one stroke.

Shea swung the ponderous weapon up in an effort to parry that downstroke. He never knew how, but in that instant the sword went as light as an amusement park cane. The blades met. With a tearing scream of metal Shea’s sword sheared right through the flaming blade. The tip sailed over his head, landing with a crackle of flame in some brush behind. Almost without Shea’s trying, his big blade swept around in a perfect stop-thrust in carte, and through the monster’s throat. With a bubbling shriek the giant crashed to earth.

Shea spun around. Beyond the lip of the dyke Heimdall was hotly engaged with his big adversary, their blades flickering, but the third giant was coming up to take a part. Shea scrambled up on the dyke and ran toward him, surprised to discover he was shouting at the top of his voice.

The giant changed course and in no time was towering right over him. Shea easily caught the first slash with a simple parry carte. The giant hesitated, irresolute; Shea saw his chance, whipped both blades around in a bind in octave, and lunged. The giant’s flaming sword was pushed back against its owner, and Shea’s point took him in the stomach with such a rush that Shea almost fell onto the collapsing monster’s body.

“Ho, ho!” cried Heimdall. He was standing over his fallen opponent, terrible bloody slashes in the giant’s body showing dim red in the light of the burning swords on the ground. “Through the guts! Never have I seen a man who used a sword as he would a spear, thrust and not strike. By Thor’s hammer, Warlock Harold, I had not expected to find you so good a man of your hands! I have seen those do worse who were called berserks and champions.” He laughed, and tossed his own sword up to catch it by the hilt. “Surely you shall be of my band at the
Time.
Though in the end it is nothing remarkable, seeing what blade you have there.”

The big sword had become heavy again and weighted Shea’s arm down. There was a trickle of blood up over the hilt onto his hand. “Looks like a plain sword to me,” he said.

“By no means. That is the enchanted sword, Frey’s invincible Hundingsbana, that shall one day be Surt’s death.

Hai! Gods and men will shout for this day; for the last of the war weapons of the Æsir is recovered! But we must hurry. Snögg!”

“Here,” said the troll, emerging from a clump of tree ferns. “Forgot to say. I put troll spell on sword so light from blade don’t show giants where we go. It will wear off in a day or two.”

“Can you tell us where there is a mountain tall and cold near here?” asked Heimdall.

“Is one—oh, many miles north. Called Steinnbjörg. Walk three days.”

“That is something less than good news,” said Heimdall. “Already we have reached the seventh night since Thor’s play with the giants of Jötunheim. By the length of his journey the Wanderer should tomorrow be at the gates of Hell. We must seek him there; much depends on it.”

Shea had been thinking furiously. If he knew enough to be a warlock, why not use the knowledge?

“Can I get hold of a few brooms?” he demanded.

“Brooms? Strange are your desires, warlock of another world,” said Heimdall.

“What you want him for?” asked Snögg.

“I may be able to work a magic trick.”

Snögg thought. “In thrall’s house, two mile east, maybe brooms. Thrall he get sick, die.”

“Lead on,” said Shea.

They were off again through the darkness. Now and then they glimpsed a pinpoint of light in the distance, as some one of the other giant search parties moved about, but none approached them.

Ten

The thrall’s hut proved a crazy pile of basalt blocks chinked with moss. The door sagged ajar. Inside it was too black to see anything.

“Snögg,” asked Shea, “can you take a little of the spell off this sword so we can have some light?”

He held it out. Snögg ran his hands up and down the blade, muttering. A faint golden gleam came from it, revealing a pair of brooms in one corner of the single-room hut. One was fairly new, the other an ancient wreck with most of the willow twigs that had composed it broken or missing.

“Now,” he said, “I need the feathers of a bird. Preferably a swift, as that’s about the fastest flier. There ought to be some around.”

“On roof, I think,” said Snögg. “You wait; I get.” He slid out, and they heard him grunting and scrambling up the hut. Presently he was back with a puff of feathers in his scaly hand.

Shea had been working out the proper spell in his head, applying both the Law of Contagion and the Law of Similarity. Now he laid the brooms on the floor and brushed them gently with the feathers, chanting:

“Bird of the south, swift bird of the south,

Lend us your wings for a night.

Stir these brooms to movement,

O bird of the south

As swift as your own and as light.”

He tossed one of the feathers into the air and blew at it, so that it bobbed about without falling.

“Verdfölnir, greatest of hawks, I invoke you!” he cried. Catching the feather, he stooped, picking at the strings that held the broom till they were loosened, inserted the feathers in the broom, and made all tight again. Kneeling, he made what he hoped were mystic passes over the brooms, declaiming:

“Up, up, arise!

Bear us away;

We must be in the mountains

Before the new day.”

“Now,” he said, “I think we can get to your Steinnbjörg soon enough.”

Snögg pointed to the brooms, which in that pale light seemed to be stirring with a motion of their own. “You fly through air?” he inquired.

“With the greatest of ease. If you want to come, I guess that new broom will carry two of us.”

“Oh, no!” said Snögg, backing away. “No thank, by Ymir! I stay on ground, you bet. I go to Elvagevu on foot. Not break beautiful me. You not worry. I know way.”

Snögg made a vague gesture of farewell and slipped out the door. Heimdall and Shea followed him, the latter with the brooms. The sky was beginning to show its first touch of dawn. “Now, let’s see how these broomsticks of ours work,” said Shea.

“What is the art of their use?” asked Heimdall.

Shea hadn’t the least idea. But he answered boldly. “Just watch me and imitate me,” he said, and squatting over his broom, with the stick between his legs and Hundingsbana stuck through his belt, said:

“By oak, ash, and broom

Before the night’s gloom,

We soar to Steinnbjörgen

To stay the world’s doom.”

The broom leaped up under him with a jerk that almost left its rider behind.

Shea gripped the stick till his knuckles were white. Up—up—up he went, till everything was blotted out in the damp opaqueness of cloud. The broom rushed on at a steeper and steeper angle, till Shea found to his horror that it was rearing over backward. He wound his legs around the stick and clung, while the broom hung for a second suspended at the top of its loop with Shea dangling beneath. It dived, then fell over sidewise, spun this way and that, with its passenger flopping like a bell clapper.

The dark earth popped out from beneath the clouds and rushed up at him. Just as he was sure he was about to crash, he managed to swing himself around the stick. The broom darted straight ahead at frightening speed, then started to nose up again. Shea inched forward to shift his weight. The broom slowed up, teetered to a forty-five-degree angle and fell off into a spin. The black rock of Muspellheim whirled madly beneath. Shea leaned back, tugging up on the stick. The broom came out of it and promptly fell into another spin on the opposite side. Shea pulled it out of that, too, being careful not to give so much pressure this time. By now he was so dizzy he couldn’t tell whether he was spinning or not.

For a few seconds the broom scudded along with a pitching motion like a porpoise with the itch. This was worse than Thor’s chariot. Shea’s stomach, always sensitive to such movements, failed him abruptly and he strewed Muspellheim with the remains of his last meal. Having accomplished this, he set himself grimly to the task of mastering his steed. He discovered that it had the characteristics of an airplane both longitudinally and laterally unstable. The moment it began to nose up, down, or sidewise the movement had to be corrected instantly and to just the right degree. But it could be managed.

A thin, drawn-out cry of “Haaar-aaald!” came to him. He had been so busy that he had had no time to look for Heimdall. A quarter-mile to his right, the Sleepless One clung desperately to his broom, which was doing an endless series of loops, like an amusement park proprietor’s dream of heaven.

Shea inched his own broom around a wide circuit. A hundred yards from Heimdall, the latter’s mount suddenly stopped looping and veered straight at him. Heimdall seemed helpless to avoid the collision, but Shea managed to pull up at the last minute, and Heimdall, yellow hair streaming, shot past underneath. Shea brought his own broom around, to discover that Heimdall was in a flat spin.

As his face came toward Shea, the latter noted it looked paler than he had ever seen it. The As called: “How to control this thing, O very fiend among warlocks?”

“Lean to your left!” shouted Shea. “When she dives, lean back far enough to level her out!” Heimdall obeyed, but overdid the lean-back and went into another series of loops. Shea yelled to shift his weight forward when the broom reached the bottom of the loop.

Heimdall overdid it again and took a wild downward plunge, but was grasping the principle of the thing and pulled out again. “Never shall we reach Odinn in time!” he shouted, pointing down. “Look, how already the hosts of Surt move toward Ragnarök!”

Shea glanced down at the tumbled plain. Sure enough, down there long files of giants were crawling over it, the flaming swords standing out like fiery particles against the black earth.

“Which way is this mountain?” he called back.

Heimdall pointed toward the left. “There is a high berg in that direction, I think; though still too strong is the fire magic for me to see clearly.”

“Let’s get above the clouds then. Ready?” Shea shifted back a little and they soared. Dark grayness gripped them, and he hoped he was keeping the correct angle. Then the gray paled to pearl, and they were out above an infinite sea of cloud, touched yellow by a rising sun.

Heimdall pointed. “Unquestionably the Steinnbjörg lies yonder. Let us speed!”

Shea looked. He could make out nothing but one more roll of cloud, perhaps a little more solid than the others. They streaked toward it.

“There must be an arresting!” cried Heimdall. “How do you stop this thing?” They had tried three times to land on the peak; each time the brooms had skimmed over the rocks at breathless speed.

“I’ll have to use a spell,” replied Shea. He swung back, chanting:

“By oak, ash, and yews

And heavenly dew,

We’ve come to Steinnbjörgen;

Land softly and true!”

The broomstick slowed down, and Shea fish tailed it into an easy landing. Heimdall followed, but plowed deep into a snowdrift. He struggled out with hair and eyebrows all white, but with a literally flashing smile on his face. “Warlocks there have been, Harold, but never like you. I find your methods somewhat drastic.”

“If you don’t want that broom anymore,” Shea retorted, “I’ll take it and leave this old one. I can use it.”

“Take it, if it pleases your fancy. But now you, too, shall see a thing.” He put both hands to his mouth and shouted. “Yo hoooo! Gulltop! Yo hooooo, Gulltop! Your master, Heimdall Odinnsson, calls!”

For a while nothing happened. Then Shea became aware of a shimmering, polychromatic radiance in the air about him. A rainbow was forming and he in the center of it. But unlike most rainbows, this one was end-on. It extended slowly down to the very snow at their feet; the colors thickened and grew solid till they blotted out the snow and clouds and crags behind them. Down the rainbow came trotting a gigantic white horse with a mane of bright metallic yellow. The animal stepped off the rainbow and nuzzled Heimdall’s chest.

“Come,” said Heimdall. “I grant you permission to ride with me, though you will have to sit behind. Mind you do not prick him with Hundingsbana.”

Shea climbed aboard with his baggage of sword and broom. The horse whirled around and bounded onto the rainbow. It galloped fast, with a long reaching stride, but almost no sound, as though it were running across an endless feather bed. The wind whistled past Shea’s ears with a speed he could only guess.

After an hour or two Heimdall turned his head. “Sverre’s house lies below the clouds; I can see it.”

The rainbow inclined downward, disappearing through the gray. For a moment they were wrapped in mist again, then out, and the rainbow, less vivid but still substantial enough to bear them, curved direct to the bonder’s gate.

Gold Top stamped to a halt in the yard, slushy with melting snow. Heimdall leaped off and toward the door, where a couple of stalwart blonds stood on guard.

“Hey,” called Shea after him. “Can’t I get something to eat?”

“Time is wanting,” shouted the Sleepless One over his shoulder, disappearing through the door, to return in a moment with horn and sword. He spoke a word or two to the men at the door, who ran around the house, and presently were visible leading out horses of their own.

“Heroes from Valhall,” explained Heimdall, buckling on his baldric, “set to guard the Gjallarhorn while the negotiations for my release were going on.” He snatched up the horn and vaulted to the saddle. The rainbow had changed direction, but lay straight away before them as Gold Top sprang into his stride again.

Shea asked: “Couldn’t you just blow your horn now without waiting to see Odinn?”

“Not so, Warlock Harold. The Wanderer is lord of gods and men. None act without his permission. But I fear me it will come late—late.” He turned his head. “Hark! Do you hear—Nay, you cannot. But my ears catch a sound which tells me the dog Garm is loose, that great monster.”

“Why does it take Odinn so long to get to Hell?” said Shea, puzzled.

“He goes in disguise, as you saw him on the moor, riding a common pony. The spae-wife Grua is of the giant brood. Be sure she would refuse to advise him, or give him ill advice, did she recognize him as one of the Æsir.”

Gold Top was up out of the clouds, riding the rainbow that seemed to stretch endlessly before. Shea could think only how many steaks one could get from the huge animal. He had never eaten horseflesh, but in his present mood was willing to try.

The sun was already low when they pierced the cloud banks again. This time they dropped straight into swirls of snow. Beneath and then around them Shea could make out a ragged, gloomy landscape of sharp black pinnacles, too steep to gather drifts.

The rainbow ended abruptly, and they were on a rough road that wound among the rock towers. Gold Top’s hoofs
clop-clopped
sharply on frozen mud. The road wound tortuously, always downward into a great gorge, which reared up pillars and buttresses on either side. Snowflakes sank vertically through the still air around them, feathering the forlorn little patches of moss that constituted the only vegetation. Cold tore at them like a knife. Enormous icicles, like the trunks of elephants, were suspended all around. There was no sound but the tread of the horse and his quick breathing, which condensed in little vapor plumes around his nostrils.

Darker and darker it grew, colder and colder. Shea whispered—he did not know why, except that it seemed appropriate—“Is this Hell of yours a cold place?”

“The coldest in the nine worlds,” said Heimdall. “Now you shall pass me up the great sword, that I may light our way with it.”

Shea did so. Ahead, all he could see over Heimdall’s shoulder now was blackness, as though the walls of the gorge had shut them in above. Shea put out one hand as they scraped one wall of the chasm, then jerked it back. The cold of the rock bit through his mitten into his fingers like fire.

Gold Top’s ears pricked forward in the light from the sword. They rounded a corner, and came suddenly on a spark of life in that gloomy place, lit by an eerie blue-green phosphorescence. Shea could make out in that half-light the tall, slouch-hatted figure of the Wanderer, and his pony beside him. There was a third figure, cloaked and hooded in black, its face invisible.

Odinn looked toward them as they approached. “Hai! Muginn brought me tidings of your captivity and your escape. The second was the better news,” said the sonorous voice.

Heimdall and Shea dismounted. The Wanderer looked sharply at Shea. “Are you not that lost one I met near the crossroads?” he asked.

“It is none other,” put in Heimdall, “and a warlock of power is he, as well as the briskest man with sword that ever I saw. He is to be of my band. We have Hundingsbana and Head. Have you won that for which you came?”

“Enough, or near enough. Myself and Vidarr are to stand before the Sons of the Wolf, those dreadful monsters. Thor shall fight the Worm; Frey, Surt. Ullr and his men are to match the hill giants and you the frost giants, as already I knew.”

“Allfather, you are needed. The dog Garm is loose and Surt is bearing the flaming sword from the south with the frost giants at his back. The
Time
is here.”

“Aieee!” screeched the black-shrouded figure. “I know ye now, Odinn! Woe the day that my tongue—”

“Silence, hag!” The deep voice seemed to fill that desolate place with thunder. “Blow, son of mine, then. Rouse our bands, for it is
Time.”

“Aieeee!” screeched the figure again. “Begone, accursed ones, to whatever place from whence ye came!” A hand shot out, and Shea noticed with a prickling of the scalp that it was fleshless. The hand seized a sprinkle of snow and threw it at Odinn. He laughed.